PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Sean C. Booth
AU  - Scott A. Rice
TI  - Interspecies interactions in bacterial colonies are determined by physiological traits and the environment
AID  - 10.1101/623017
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 623017
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/04/15/623017.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/04/15/623017.full
AB  - Interspecies interactions in bacterial biofilms have important impacts on the composition and function of communities in natural and engineered systems. To investigate these interactions, synthetic communities provide experimentally tractable systems. Agar-surface colonies are similar to biofilms and have been used for investigating the eco-evolutionary and biophysical forces that determine community composition and spatial distribution of bacteria. Prior work has focused on intraspecies interactions, using differently fluorescent tagged but identical or genetically modified strains of the same species. Here, we investigated how physiological differences determine the community composition and spatial distribution in synthetic communities of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Pseudomonas protegens and Klebsiella pneumoniae. Using quantitative microscopic imaging, we found that interspecies interactions in multispecies colonies are influenced by type IV pilus mediated motility, extracellular matrix secretion, environmental parameters and the specific species involved. These results indicate that the patterns observable in mixed species colonies can be used to understand the mechanisms that drive interspecies interactions, which are dependent on the interplay between specific species’ physiology and environmental conditions.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.